


anything but empty

by ODed_on_jingle_jangle



Category: Teenage Cocktail (2016)
Genre: Character Study, F/F, Grief/Mourning, Heavy Angst, Implied/Referenced Underage Sex, Introspection, Mild Blood, Mild Gore, Post-Canon, Wakes & Funerals, Webcam/Video Chat Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-12
Updated: 2020-01-12
Packaged: 2021-02-27 05:14:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,214
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22181626
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ODed_on_jingle_jangle/pseuds/ODed_on_jingle_jangle
Summary: Jules smiles impishly and blood trickles down the corner of her mouth. It invokes a memory of her taking a bite of a chocolate from the heart shaped box Annie had gotten her for Valentine’s Day, a soft, pleasedmmmpurring in her throat as cherry cordial leaked between her teeth. Annie leaning in and kissing it off her lips, savoring the sticky sweetness.Even more blood rolls down as Jules’s smile falls slack.
Relationships: Annie Fenton/Jules Rae
Comments: 1
Kudos: 3





	anything but empty

**Author's Note:**

> No one has written anything for Teenage Cocktail on here and I suppose I'm not that surprised because it's not like it's particularly well known or popular. So I get to be the first one, wheeee, fun. 
> 
> So this fic is based off the presumption that Jules dies at the end. I, for one, am thankful that it's ambiguous enough to say she lived. I like to think that she lived. In fact, I hope to write another fic about her and Annie for Femslash February running with the interpretation that she lived. But as much as I like the idea of that, I'm also an angsty ass bitch so I had to write this version too.

“Just hold on, okay?” Annie urges breathlessly, crawling to Jules and charily moving her hands to her face. 

Jules’s stare never leaves her as Annie gently cradles her head in her lap, blood smearing between her fingers.

“We’re gonna fix you right up,” she promises as the police officers’ voices boom above her and Frank blubbers like an overgrown infant just a few dirty tiles away. These are details Annie is aware of but unconcerned with. In this moment it is only Jules who matters.

“I know,” Jules tells her weakly. “We’re going to New York.” 

“Yeah,” Annie agrees, voice thick and trembling, suddenly desperate to hold onto this dream that less than fifteen minutes ago, she wasn’t even sure sure wanted anymore. “We’re gonna get you all fixed up and hop on the next flight there.” 

Jules smiles impishly and blood trickles down the corner of her mouth. It invokes a memory of them, together on her bed in the cat masks, Jules taking a bite of a chocolate from the heart shaped box Annie had gotten her for Valentine’s Day, a soft, pleased _mmm_ purring in her throat as cherry cordial leaked between her teeth. Annie leaning in and kissing it off her lips, savoring the sticky sweetness.

Even more blood rolls down, following the curve of Jules’s chin as her smile falls slack. The quiet intensity drains from her stare but her eyes remained open, fixed upon Annie.

“Just relax, Jules,” Annie whimpers, her own eyes stinging with tears. “Keep calm, keep breathing.” 

As she says this, somewhere in the pit of her stomach sits the cold, hard knowledge that Jules isn’t really breathing at all.

* * *

Not that long ago, Annie was terrified of her parents finding out about the camming. It seemed like it would be the end of the world if they found out, if they grounded her for months and confiscated her laptop, if they forbade her from seeing Jules— 

But Jules died and it really was the end of the world, and everything else that could’ve happened really does seem like that tortured teenage bullshit her mother was bored of. 

Her parents know and the police know, she’d told them everything, all choked up as Jules’s cherry cordial blood stiffened on her clothes, crusted under her fingernails, dried and flaked along the heart line in her palm. 

“You should’ve known better!” her mother screeches at her, frazzled, fresh out of her own sobs. “I’m sorry about what happened to Jules, I really am, but if this is what she made you do—“ 

“She didn’t make me do anything, Mom!” 

“You certainly didn’t do anything like this before you met her,” she sums, eyes blazing. “Showing your body to strangers on the internet, prostituting yourself to married men!” 

“Lynn,” her father pleads, reaching for her mother. 

She spins away from him, wildly throwing her hands as if fending off a swarm of wasps. “She almost got herself killed doing this shit, Tom!” 

“She just lost her best friend,” her dad says, voice firm but eyes wet. 

He’s trying to have her back. He’s always tried to have her back. 

“Jules wasn’t just my best friend,” Annie divulges in the wake of everything else that has come out, all the skeletons popping out of her closet like they’d been stuffed in too tight, the floorboards of her life reverberating beneath every rattling bone. “We were together. We were in love.” 

_We were so in love it was crazy,_ she thinks, whatever strength is left inside of her giving way, _I had her and she had me, and we were going to take each other out of this stupid, nothing, nowhere town._

Her father seems more surprised than her mother, his jaw falling open while she inhales a quick, sharp breath. They look at each other, searching for what to say. Words of comfort or words of reprimand. 

Annie doesn’t care to hear either, so she whips around and marches back up the stairs. She slams her door shut, throws herself on the bed. For awhile she simply stares holes into the ceiling but eventually she reaches past the waistband of her pajama pants and traces her tattoo with her fingertip. 

She swears she can almost feel the ghost of Jules when she does so, right beside her in this bed. She wishes it were true. 

She wonders how things would be if they played out differently. If she would’ve died in Jules’s lap instead of Jules in hers. What Jules would do. 

Still gone to New York, probably. Still become the dancer she was practically destined to be. Annie knows she wouldn’t be forgotten though. Jules would probably tattoo Annie’s name to the inside of her wrist in cursive. Press her lips to the font for good luck before stepping out on stage, every single time. Sleep soundly in Annie’s old t-shirts and dream sweetly of spooning one another on Sunday mornings. 

* * *

Annie doesn’t leave her room much in the days leading up to Jules’s funeral. These are days that blur into one another, muddy gray hours of crying herself to sleep, dreaming of Jules’s candied kisses against her collarbone and Jules twirling in perfect pirouettes across drab concrete, crying some more upon the waking re-discoveries that she would neither feel nor see Jules ever again. 

Her parents vacillate between fretting and scolding, entering her messy domain of mourning and talking at Annie while she passively tunes them out. She hands over her laptop without complaint, doesn’t bother with her phone, simply checks out of reality as much as possible. Eats instant noodles only when she can’t put it off anymore and doesn’t taste them at all. 

The void that Jules left in her life is excruciating. This black hole that sucks up everything and leaves Annie nothing but excruciating, untouchable hurt. Losing Jules, losing what they had together, losing the person Annie could be with Jules all feels so much bigger than the person Annie is by herself. 

The grief crushes the air right out of her lungs, inescapable, like a neon sign that won’t turn off flashing **Jules is Dead, Jules is Dead, Jules is Dead** , over and over and over again. 

There’s not a moment Annie doesn’t think of her. So there’s not a moment Annie isn’t missing her. Every second she is aware that Jules is gone, her absence throbbing like a phantom limb. Her mind races in circles like horses around a track, going over every minute of that dreaded day and every little thing that might’ve lead up to it. Every bad move. 

They shouldn't have slept with Frank. Annie was trepidatious about it from the beginning. Jules offered an out and she should’ve taken it. At the time she didn’t want to be that person, the person to flake, to stand in the way of getting out of this stupid, nothing, nowhere town as their stupid, nothing, nowhere school treated them like gunk stuck between the grout. 

But if she had been that person, Jules would still be here. The guilt is sludge beneath her skin. Makes her feel as disgusting as the eyes of her peers accused her of being. 

Annie had a chance to stop this, she didn’t, and Jules died for it. 

* * *

Annie forces herself to shower the day of the memorial. She drags a loofa across her skin, washes her hair with the macintosh apple shampoo because that’s the kind Jules liked best. She’d curl her fingers through Annie’s hair, bury the elegant slope of her nose in the wavy curtain of it and inhale a long whiff. 

For a moment, Annie closes her eyes and pretends that the steamy air is the soft puff of Jules’s breath against the nape of her neck. For a heartbeat, it even eases the gnawing ache inside of her. 

But eventually the water runs cold and she has no choice but to step over the side of the tub, onto the towel, and confront the black dress that hangs on the back of the bathroom door. 

It smells like fabric softener and the thick, heavy material is sort of scratchy against her skin. When Annie looks at reflection in the mirror, she thinks she appears much older than she is. Maybe even her mother’s age. She isn’t sure if it’s the dark half-moons of a week stricken sleepless beneath her eyes, or the mature, somber style of the mourning dress that envelops her body, or a combination that creates this illusion of a grown woman in the glass. 

It’s strange, really. For months she’d insisted to her mother that she was practically an adult, but now Annie feels incredibly, explicitly, like the stupidest fucking child-headed girl of all time, her spine crumbling under the consequences of choices she wasn’t actually mature enough to make. 

Her mother doesn’t come to the memorial but she does offer Annie a token beforehand. A butterfly with kaleidoscope wings on a slim metal necklace chain. Annie blinks down at it resting against the neckline of her coal black dress and tilts her head. 

“It’s cremation pendant,” her mother explains. “There’s an inner compartment for a loved one’s ashes.” 

The black hole resurfaces and sucks all the oxygen out of the room. 

“I think you should ask Mr. Rae if you can have some of Jules’s ashes,” she goes on, whisper soft, eyes dark with sorrow. 

Annie can’t speak. She hugs her instead, squeezes her tight. 

And whatever happens between letting go of her mother and arriving at the memorial dissolves, it’s like Annie blinked and one moment became the next. When she gets out of the car, she realizes she has no recollection of the drive over. On any other day she might be concerned about this. 

Jules’s memorial is a quaint thing at her home. Mr. Rae dons a generic black suit and has a pinched look on his face that is more uncomfortable than sad. He doesn’t look like a heartbroken father grieving a lost daughter. He looks like an actor in a commercial for constipation medication.

There are a handful of people Annie can only assume are family members. Some kids from school who sniffle now and shoot Annie sympathetic glances as if last week they hadn’t been snickering, sneering, looking down on her and Jules as if they were filthier than the used condoms stuck to the tarmac in the parking lot. Neither Alex nor Scott are here. 

Good. If they were here, Annie would strut right to the kitchen and return with knives in each hand. “I’ll fucking do it,” she would hiss and mean, just like she meant it when she held the blade to Frank’s throat. 

Buried beneath her grief is a slow, simmering anger for the both of them. Jules would be here if not for them, if not for Alex. What Alex did was the catalyst for everything that came after, every desperate risk they took. And with this thought in mind, Annie almost wishes they were here. 

Almost wishes they were here so she’d have an excuse to take the kitchen knives anyway, stab both stupid boys to death, send them right to wherever Jules was so they could grovel at her feet as ghosts. Except for the part that Annie doesn’t truly believe in afters. Doesn’t really believe that Jules is anywhere except inside of that plain pewter urn on the mantle. 

Ugh. That urn. It’s so dull, so nondescript, so opposite of everything that Jules actually was in life. Jules was vibrant, goddamnit, unmistakable, a fucking fireworks display in human form. And her father— stupid, checked out, constipated-face Mr. Rae couldn’t even get her a decent urn? 

He couldn’t get her something glass blown, or engraved, or studded with her birthstones? Just this generic silver thing that looks like some kind of knockoff vase from K-mart. It’s infuriating. 

But Annie seems to be the only one to notice, the only one to care. Everybody else mills aimlessly about the Rae household, picking at the snacks set out on the dining room table’s black cloth. A picture of Jules rests between the cheese and cracker plates, smiling as if she knows a secret. 

Annie stares back into the eyes of the photograph, like if she looks long enough she might figure it out. 

Dead girls’ eyes yield no answers. With a sour burn in the back of her throat, Annie turns away. 

What would Jules do? 

If this were Annie’s funeral, if it were Annie’s stuffed ashes in the least personalized urn of all time, what would she think? 

Then Annie realizes that Jules wouldn’t think at all. Jules would just do. Annie steps out of her classy black kitten heels, pads across the carpet in her sheer nylons with slow, deliberate steps. She snatches the urn like she snatched the crystal bowl of mints from the diner and takes off running as people gasp in horror behind her. 

Annie practically throws herself in her car, Jules's offensively plain urn still tucked under her arm. She turns the key and guns it, tearing out the driveway. 

“We’re still going to New York, Jules!” she announces as she swerves onto the street. “I’ve got you, okay?” 


End file.
